


V: help me hold onto you

by hoko_onchi



Series: a panoply of song [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Sex, Eliot Waugh's Canonically Huge Dick, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Everybody Tops, Fix-It of Sorts, Healing and Grief, Holiday Themes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Quentin Coldwater's Canonical Oral Fixation, Stories Told in Two Timelines, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/pseuds/hoko_onchi
Summary: He’s willing, he thinks, to live in the frenzied path of this life where they’re both struggling again, rearranging the parts of it so quickly that he can barely hold onto the images that whip past him. He wonders what he’ll remember of this time when he’s old. Maybe just the shifting expressions of Quentin’s face, solemn and concerned, openly adoring when he looks at Eliot, lit from within with wonder when he perfects a spell or reads to Teddy before bed. Solstice memories might not stick (God, he hopes—he hopes he gets to keep that as he ages—or if they ever go back home), but some of these things will remain clear. He can only hope.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: a panoply of song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939063
Comments: 30
Kudos: 80
Collections: Seven Times Quentin gave Eliot that Good Dick





	V: help me hold onto you

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the feelsy Quentin topping fic that you didn't know you were gonna get and I didn't know I was gonna write. Anyway, this is a sequel to [godforsaken mess](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650630), so the mosaic bits take place in a world where Arielle left, and Q and Eliot are rebuilding their lives and forming a real, lasting relationship. (You don't need to read the first fic for this one to make sense, however.) The other parts of the story take place post-Monster, when Eliot and Quentin are living in the penthouse and healing from trauma. 
> 
> There is a brief mention of canonical shit the Monster did to Quentin. 
> 
> Thank you as always to my amazing beta, Rubi. Thank you, AmbiguousPenny, for the prompt when I quickly changed gears and decided to go multi-chapter with my curse fic. And thanks to Aud, Tay, Em, and Madi for listening to me rant at various points about this fic and reading my snippets. Thanks to the QCT group for being amazing, and thank you to mixtapestar for hosting the gorgeous image made by TheAudity!
> 
> The title is taken from "The Archer" by Taylor Swift.

**Fillory, Year Seven**

In Eliot’s first year at Brakebills—in an effort to avoid seeing her family over spring break—Margo had taken him to Japan. The _shinkansen_ ride from Yokohama to Kyoto took two hours, four times faster than the overnight bus ride where his knees would have been smashed into the back of another passenger’s seat. It moved faster than a train _should_ go, eerily quiet and bright and clean. 

It was wholly unlike the clunky, swaying Amtrak train he’d taken from Indiana to New York when he was seventeen. On the bullet train, the Japanese countryside couldn’t even take shape in his mind; he saw only the blur of yellow-green rice fields and the faded brown shapes of houses dotting the gently sloping hills of the Kansai region, the vast pastoral sweep of Shiga-ken blending into Kyoto City before he could process they’d passed from one province into the next. 

The landscape washed by him in a blur of yellow-green rice fields, the faded brown shapes of houses, the vermilion markers of Shinto shrines repeating like bass notes in a thrumming, featureless pop song. When Quentin had asked him about the trip— _Was it all like Spirited Away?_ —Eliot searched his brain and found it eerily blank of imagery apart from the fluorescent hustle of Osaka and the quiet of the shrines along the shopping streets in Kyoto, drunken renditions of Journey and Pat Benetar in karaoke bars with cheap whiskey, a cute Japanese magician named Masa who’d sat with them for hours, drinking absinthe and shooting off fireworks by the Kamo River.

That’s what his life is now: a perpetual bullet train ride, a muddied jumble, transforming so rapidly that he’s barely able to identify dissatisfaction or joy before he arrives at the next station along the line.

Many of the stops are pure and good in a way that Eliot has never known. Their solstice celebration a few days ago takes center stage in his mind: the apple cake he’d made with Teddy; Quentin singing Christmas carols, tuneless and tipsy; the snow that had fallen the night after gift giving; Teddy asleep, clutching the wooden car Eliot had made for him; the memory box he’d crafted for Quentin, lined with scraps of velvet and spelled to be airtight. (A symbol. A commitment. _I’m here_ , and _we can share this life_ , and _I know I’m going to fuck this up, but I’m trying_.)

Other things fade into the background, the mosaic patterns and their dinners and breakfasts and nighttimes held tight together beneath wool and hemp blankets, all of it a barely identifiable green-gold blur as they both push forward into a new beginning. 

Despite the tentative peace with Ari’s family, her parents have been withholding the potion-making supplies they’ve always freely given, causing Eliot and Quentin to scramble to barter for basic necessities (Eliot had fretted for days over the fabric Quentin had bought for him for solstice, quieting only when Q had told him he’d fixed three leaky roofs for it, and to please shut the fuck up about an equitable exchange of holiday gifts). 

Eliot suspects Arielle herself doesn’t know what her family is doing, but he hasn’t seen her, and Quentin hasn’t asked. Won’t ask. They were used to scarcity for a long time; they just didn’t know they’d be facing it again. Not this far into their lives.

“Placed the last tile for today,” Quentin says. 

“Hm? Yeah?” Eliot stokes the fire; a log turns over and sends up red sparks. There’s an ache in the pit of his stomach. He always feels it when they hand Teddy off to Ari’s family for the week. 

When Eliot looks up, Quentin is backlit by the sun setting behind the trees, the pinks and yellows of the winter sky casting Quentin in golden light. Soft and beautiful in his blue wrap shirt and linen trousers, hair tied back loose, he looks like someone from a dream Eliot once had. Not quite a memory, not quite reality. That’s how Quentin affects him; unreal, a figment of his imagination. 

He gives Eliot a little shrug. “Yeah. Doesn’t, um—look like we’re going anywhere.”

“Good, I guess,” Eliot says, brushing the fine layer of ash from his pants. “I don’t want to go anywhere. First time in my life, I think.”

Quentin smiles at that, cheeks dimpling. “That’s good, then.”

“Yeah. I’m not planning to dip out to Whitespire and cut a portal through time. At least not anytime soon.”

Quentin laughs a little, mirthless. There are new lines etched on Quentin’s face, a frown pulling at his cheeks more often than not these days. “Hand off go okay this afternoon?”

“Della didn’t try to kill me. Teddy seemed happy. He’s not crying anymore during transitions.”

“You see Ari?”

Eliot shakes his head. “She’s taking some time before she does that. The whole seeing me thing.”

“It’s been three months,” Quentin says, but there’s no snark in his voice, just a tired weight. Ari has seen Quentin a few times now, and Eliot can see how it pulls at him—Quentin’s grief is palpable, one of the constants along their rapidly changing path, a flickering light above their heads that neither of them are quite able to reach. 

“What can I say, sweetheart?” He takes Quentin into his arms and kisses his forehead, tucking him into the shape of body. “She’s not terribly fond of homewreckers.”

“El—” He pushes his head against Eliot’s shoulder, like a large housecat. He’s Eliot’s favorite housecat. The most precious, the most loved.

“It’s fine—really.” It’s not, but Eliot doesn’t have any expectations. Arielle was his closest friend here. A piece of him will always be haunted and dragged down by the choices he made, but he doesn’t regret having Quentin. That’s the worst thing—he has what he wants, and there’s no guilt in him. Where guilt should be, there’s only a blank, open space. 

The rest of him is all broken pieces, and the only thing he feels sometimes—the governing Circumstance of his soul—is a needy possessiveness of this home and this life and the man who lives here. Q has pulled at him and guided him and changed him, led him into a new world.

He’s willing, he thinks, to live in the frenzied path of this life where they’re both struggling again, rearranging the parts of it so quickly that he can barely hold onto the images that whip past him. He wonders what he’ll remember of this time when he’s old. Maybe just the shifting expressions of Quentin’s face, solemn and concerned, openly adoring when he looks at Eliot, lit from within with wonder when he perfects a spell or reads to Teddy before bed. Solstice memories might not stick (God, he hopes—he hopes he gets to keep that as he ages—or if they ever go back home), but some of these things will remain clear. He can only hope.

Eliot knows—has always known—that something in him doesn’t work quite right. He knows he should be mourning the end of Quentin’s marriage, knows that he should feel pain. He doesn’t, though; he’s resigned himself to that defect. He can only draw up the satisfied knowledge that there’s finally someone sitting next to him on the fucked up trip that has been his life. And for once, he can at least imagine the next station, the next moment, and be glad for it because Quentin is the one sharing it with him.

~~***~~

**Manhattan, 2019**

“Hey, El, come on, wake up. Wake up.” Quentin’s pulse picks up, Eliot’s shoulders twisting beneath his hands, his face lined with pain, with a terror that Quentin knows—he just knows the flip side of it, the horror of being pulled and used and—blood spattered across his face, all while aching with the loss of the man who had walked beside him for a lifetime— “ _El_. Please. Wake up.” 

Eliot jolts awake, his arm flailing out across Quentin’s chest, Eliot’s fingers digging into his flesh. Quentin flinches, his heartbeat heavy, lodged in his throat like a squirming, living thing, his mouth dry and—Eliot’s gripping his shoulder hard, his eyes glassy and blinking rapidly in the gray pre-dawn light. 

Quentin’s aware that it’s panic—it’s just panic—nothing immediately fatal is happening—but he’s shaking now, the nerves in the arm that had been shattered and reformed—wood first and now magic flesh, reborn from pieced together spells and weeks of healing—prickling up his neck to the top of his head, the crackling pathway of pain taking shape beneath his skin as he folds in on himself, sobbing. 

He reminds himself. This is Eliot. And they’re alive. And in this world of apocalyptic uncertainty, they’re secured to each other, whole or close enough to it. 

“Q, I’m here, okay? I’m sorry.” Eliot sits up, panting. He looks at his hand like it’s an alien thing, even though he’s loosening his grip and letting go, leaving finger-shaped marks against Quentin’s skin. “He did that to you—didn’t he? In the middle of the night—”

“Don’t—it doesn’t matter, okay?” Quentin’s voice is shaking, hoarse. He grabs Eliot’s hand and threads their fingers together; Eliot’s hand is still in his. They’re still them, still together. “You don’t need to apologize. Okay?”

“It’s red where I grabbed you.” Eliot’s voice is broken around the edges. “There’s going to be a bruise. He did that—hurt you—”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Quentin says, wiping tears from his eyes. He pulls Eliot down to the bed next to him and curls into his side, careful to avoid the healing wound above his right hip, all new pink skin, the dissolving stitches not quite dissolved. It’ll be a month tomorrow. Quentin only has a panic attack every other day or so now, compared to—like, hourly—which is what it had been the week after he woke up in the infirmary—

And it wasn’t fine. It hadn’t been fine until—Quentin pulled out an IV—he was experienced enough with hospitals to do it correctly, covering the pinprick wound with gauze and tape—and he’d wandered the clean, empty halls until he found Eliot’s room. 

After a few desperate attempts, high off his ass on whatever painkillers and potions Lipson had put in his IV, sobbing and standing on his tiptoes so he could see Eliot through the tiny window on the door, Quentin had twisted his hands into the tuts—it was all muscle memory from this life and the other, the magic he held inside him—and he’d pulled up the ward-breaking spell he’d mastered in Fillory in year ten, cracking the ward like it was nothing. He had shuffled inside, sobbing, and crawled in bed next to Eliot. 

Eliot woke up for the first time that next morning when Lipson had tried to pull Quentin away—Quentin was screaming and—

“Hey, baby,” Eliot had croaked. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m in tip-top shape,” Quentin had said, his voice rasping. 

Eliot had smiled at him before his face went distant. “I had a bad dream,” he’d said—

Quentin remembers—that when Eliot woke up, he’d mumbled that Quentin was gone in his dream, and he wonders—they both wonder— if there’s a timeline where one of them didn’t wake up. They skip around the idea when they’re talking, but they both know it’s more than possible. Infinite timelines and infinite possibilities, echoing across the universe. But they’re in this one, alive and mostly in one piece.

Quentin had clung to Eliot after he crawled into his bed. Wouldn’t let go. Eliot was back, his Eliot. The right Eliot in the right body. Even drenched in sweat, covered in the sour smell of the infirmary, Eliot was strong and stunning, regal and impossibly lovely. 

Quentin thinks—it must have looked not so great to Alice when she came to visit, but she hadn’t said anything when she saw Quentin in a bed pushed next to Eliot’s, holding his hand as he slept. She’d just nodded, her lips drawn into a thin line, like it made sense. Like this is what she’d been expecting, maybe since Eliot came back or—maybe longer than that. 

Eliot and Quentin had stayed like that, bedded down next to each other, Lipson sighing and fretting over both of them as, slowly, they began to heal.

It had been three days until Quentin kissed him, but Eliot had kissed him back—soft and hesitant, sighing into his mouth and cradling his face—

They’re okay. It’ll be okay. 

Quentin kisses him now in their bed, in their own room—tongue between his lips—and puts his leg between Eliot’s, careful, so careful, of his hip.

“We’re supposed to—to do the thing with the Library today,” Eliot mumbles against the crook of Quentin’s shoulder. 

“I told Jules we’re out for a while. Out of commission. Sleeping in and staying here. Not, uh. Not forever. But for now.”

“Sure you don’t wanna—” Eliot laughs, a little cold, pushing back from Quentin. “—do some cooperative magic with Alice to open up a portal?”

Quentin’s stomach flips over, and he bites the inside of his cheek, takes a deep breath. New lines on Eliot’s face tell a story of pain, of horror. He’s thinner than he was when the Monster took over his body, his skin pulled tight against his ribs. His words are the remaining layer of his defense system. God, Eliot really needs to go to fucking therapy.

Eliot tries to pull away, but Quentin hangs on, holding his wrist. “We’re not going down that road, Eliot. I kissed Alice once before I thought I was going to—well. I didn’t think I was coming back. I didn’t think _you_ were coming back. I thought we were both—we were gone.”

“I know.” Eliot presses his nose to Quentin’s hair, kisses his earlobe.

“Yeah. I know you do. You do know. We’ve been over this. I’m not letting you shut me out this time. We’ve been through—a fuck of a lot together. I’m not letting you break this down.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” The circles beneath Eliot’s eyes are darker than usual. There’s still a smear of gray eyeliner beneath his lash line, settled into the lines beneath his eyes. His skin, Quentin thinks, is somehow changed. 

After his dad went through that first round of chemo, the skin on his face was papery and bruised like the flesh of a too-ripe fruit. It never went back to its normal elasticity—that’s what Eliot’s face calls to mind when Quentin really looks at him now. It bears the marks of trauma beyond understanding, the landscape of his features altered. Quentin traces his finger over the ridge of Eliot’s cheekbone, brushes his thumb over the lines next to his eyes, and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“I love you.” It still feels like a risk to say the words, despite everything. He gets it now, better than he did before, when his heart was shattered, when he tried to trap himself with the Monster for eternity. Away from all his failures. “I’m always going to love you, Eliot.”

“I know.” He pulls Quentin closer and brushes their lips together, tilting his head back and kissing him until the noise in his brain starts to fuzz out. When Eliot pulls away, his lips are wet, his hair tousled from sleep. His eyes are still distant, a little sad, his veneer showing its cracks. He’s sure Eliot would see it as a flaw, losing his masks, even if it’s only when he’s alone with Quentin—but Quentin thinks he’s never looked any more beautiful than he does now, tired and thin-skinned, too thin, with the pink scar above that hip. 

“This isn’t going to work if you keep it all locked up”

“But I have such a talent for repressing my emotions. Pity to let all those years of practice go to waste.”

Quentin huffs out a laugh. “You are, like—completely exceptional in that regard. But I’m not going anywhere. We take care of each other. Even—listen, even when we were all fucked up, we always took care of each other.” Quentin isn’t sure if he means—here, now, Manhattan or—Brakebills of the past or—during their lives at the mosaic, in the years when Teddy was still young. Quentin has a set of not-quite recollections—silhouettes and shadows from those years in his other life. Not enough to draw up a timeline of events or outline exactly what had happened, but he knows—he clung to Eliot, depended on him. And Eliot—for all of his self-proclaimed fear of commitment—had held space for him, had helped him adapt and grow to accommodate the life they’d lived together.

It’s funny, sometimes. The way those pieces of his other life return to him. Occasionally, a fully formed picture will hit him out of the blue, like a single film frame, each detail projected in high definition. The rest of the memory always escapes him, so Quentin has been left with a mismatched set of movie stills. What surrounds each of those static images are—when there’s anything at all—sense memories and impressions of impressions. 

In his carefully preserved collection, each noted in a journal he kept hidden in the penthouse when Eliot was overtaken by the Monster—a journal that now sits on the nightstand by his bed—their bed, now—he remembers—

—falling asleep wrapped up with Eliot, drifting off to the crackling of the fire, the sensation of his nose pressed to Teddy’s fat, cold cheek after he’d been playing outside all morning, the taste of the white fish from the river, blackened in the fire, Eliot kissing him senseless and tucking Quentin into his body to make him feel safe and small and held. He remembers Eliot knowing him and choosing him and returning to him, a tide washing back to shore.

He knows the same happens to Eliot—similar bursts of memory, unmoving snapshots and their related impressions. They’ve talked about it only twice since Eliot returned to his body, and each time, Quentin has added the memories Eliot was willing to share to his journal, Eliot watching him with nervous interest, but interest nonetheless, each time.

Eliot says there are other things he recalls—sets of years that stand out more than others—but he hasn’t said more than that.

Quentin wonders, sometimes, if that’s part of the key—part of the answer—of why Eliot had pushed him away, said _that’s not me_ , _and that’s definitely not you, not when we have a choice_ —he wonders if Eliot’s memories run counter to his own, like he somehow held onto all the worst things, all the good washed away and faded, all the hurt brought to the forefront. Wonders if Eliot’s mind is absent the same certainty that still sits with Quentin.

He pets over Eliot’s neck, twists his fingers through Eliot’s curls. When Eliot speaks, the words are slow and halting. “I keep having that dream. It’s so real.”

“I know. The one where you wake up—”

“And you’re not there. I told you at the infirmary it was—I couldn’t find you.”

Quentin presses a kiss to the bony tip of his shoulder, runs his fingers between Eliot’s shoulder blades. “Yeah.”

“And she says you’re gone, that you died throwing the Monster’s essence into the—whatever it was, the mirror. I dreamed it shattered.”

“It did,” Quentin says, swallowing against the growing weight in his chest. “It did—but I’m here. I made it. Penny got me out. I got out.”

Eliot pushes out a huff of air and pulls them close together on the bed, feet tangled and a shaky hand on Quentin’s hip. “You’d think I’d have dreams about the Monster or, I don’t know, any number of traumas.”

Quentin presses his nose to Eliot’s hair. Something tropical—it puts him in mind of the beach. Coconuts and palm groves, hammocks in the breeze. He closes his eyes, wishes he could put them both there, stilled in that image on a distant island, healed and free. “Yeah. We don’t get to pick what scares us, I don’t think. I feel like I absorbed that from like, a lot of therapy”

Eliot lets out a deep breath, his muscles twitching and relaxing beneath Quentin’s fingers, like something buried beneath his skin is cracking apart and unwinding. “I guess we don’t. I don’t know if it would be any less terrible if we could.”

“True.” He thinks, bizarrely, of the scene with the bogart in the third Harry Potter book, how the fears of each student were tied up with pain and trauma and loss and shame. And how—at the end of the day—Harry Potter is problematic as fuck, but—the truth of what lies trapped in every closet is resonant. The deepest part of the mind chooses its own terrors. Humans simply don’t get a say on the subject of their fears.

“It’s always that—I wake up and I—I don’t get to tell you—” Eliot stops. Quentin can feel his heartbeat, rapid, against his own.

“I’m here. I made it—I’m here.”

“Yeah.” Eliot breathes in, breathes out. “I don’t know if I deserve it. You being there, waiting for me. Maybe that’s why—that’s why I keep dreaming it.”

“Hey, El.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t think it’s about what we deserve or what we don’t deserve. That gets into a whole line of thinking that’s not really, um, productive.”

“I was always good at being terribly unproductive.” Eliot shifts and slips his foot beneath Quentin’s calf. 

“You know I love you?”

“Mm,” Eliot replies, “mhmm.”

“And I’m not letting you run away—”

“I wouldn’t get very far. Not with my cane.”

Quentin laughs, which sets off a brief, sharp spiral of pain in his shoulder. “Well, I’m not going anywhere. You’ll have to kick me out. And I’m not really qualified to live outside of this penthouse or like—have a job of any kind so—”

“I’m not kicking you to the curb, but you’d be better off if I did—” Eliot cuts himself off with a laugh and squeezes Quentin’s waist.

“No,” Quentin says. “I went through hell to get you back. I’m not letting you go.”

“It was my fault, Q. That you almost died.” Eliot’s hand is pressed tight to Quentin’s back. 

“It’s not. I’ll keep telling you—it’s not.”

Eliot nods, forehead pressed to Quentin’s, their lips just barely touching. “I’m a perennial fuck up, the High King of fucking up everything. I was cruel to you.”

“So much has happened in just the past year.” Quentin stops. He wants to say this right. “We’re not those people anymore, Eliot. I don’t think I was ever the same—not after the quest. Maybe it just took you a little longer for it to, like, sink in. But you’re not the same, either.”

For long moments, all he can hear is Eliot’s raspy breathing, the swishing of cars passing over rainy streets outside. “Yeah.”

Quentin knows magic doesn’t always work the way he wants it to. He can mend mugs and mirrors, adds notations to meta-comp spells with Julia and Kady, mixes the poultice for Eliot’s wound every evening, imbuing it with healing magic that—actually—comes quite easily to him—it’s like mending, he thinks, so it comes easier, the act of creating something that heals and restores, knits together the broken fibers of skin and fascia—

But he can’t reach inside Eliot and piece together the shards of memories he’s lost, the images he’s reinterpreted; he can’t create a singular whole that makes him see that—it’s not only that _they work_ —it’s that Quentin doesn’t work without him, in any time, in any world. Or at least, he thinks, Quentin wouldn’t function _optimally_ without him.

“My future is here. With you,” Quentin says. And he hopes that sums it up—he knows out in the world, there are infinite combinations of love. That for every person, there are maybe dozens or hundreds—maybe thousands—of great loves. He doesn’t exactly believe in soulmates—not the way some people do, thinking there’s, like—that one person who’s everything, who ticks all the boxes and fits into your life without any trouble. That’s not how it works. 

He knows it’s more that—there are dozens of people he’ll meet and love, other people he’s already met and loved at different times for different reasons, in different ways. 

He’d just rather not spend his life searching for someone else when no one in this world or any other shares his history in quite the same way. Not just this history, with its dark, twisting pathways and tragedies, but that other life, with all of its joy and its hardships, its pervasive and echoing mistakes. It was beautiful not because it was idyllic, but because it was them. And Eliot’s the only one who shares that with him.

Eliot smiles weakly. “Mm. I love hearing that. But Q—”

“Look, that sounds like a precursor to some other kind of defeatist bullshit—”

“It’s not—I promise. It’s hard for me to believe that you’d want me. After everything.”

“I choose you. If that’s what you need to hear—”

Eliot kisses him, hot and close, and he’s—he’s like clean water and fresh air, and sometimes, Quentin thinks he has the sense of the smell of the rosemary oil Eliot put in his hair, the musk of his skin after an afternoon in the sun—it’s covered here by soap and deodorant, the trappings of a modern life that they didn’t have in Fillory—but he can almost taste that part of him, like a memory sitting on his tongue.

“You’ll have to keep reminding me.”

~~***~~

**Fillory, Year Seven**

“We should go to bed,” Eliot says. It’s cold on the daybed, but Quentin’s back is pressed against him, while Eliot leans on the headboard. Arms around Quentin, he feels warm for now, safe despite the precarious state of their lives right now. It’ll snow again this week, and the temperature will drop even further, and the climate spells won’t hold up. A long winter, guided by the strange movement of the Fillorian planet and its turn around the sun. Their first winter in four years without Ari. 

“Mm, I guess.” Quentin pulls Eliot’s hand around his waist. “I like it when it’s cold out here.”

“It’s too cold. I don’t want you to get sick again.”

“Then you should make me warm.” Quentin squeezes his thigh. Heat rises through him, spreading slow and patient through his core. He doesn’t feel the same furious whip of hunger that possessed him in the months leading up to Ari leaving, but the need is sharp and present, undeniable. 

God—he’ll never be able to get over the way Quentin does that after years and years and uncounted times they’ve been together, how every touch feels like a revelation. His cock, pressed to the small of Quentin’s back, twitches and—

And—Quentin turns, looking up at him, his lips parted, and Eliot kisses him, slow and syrupy, cupping the side of his face, tasting the warmth of Quentin’s tongue, the heat of his mouth, the scent of his skin—the cold ozone of the winter air and the spices from the pheasant they roasted in the coals of the fire, a hint of the turmeric-like herb that coated the crispy skin. It seems there was never a time where he didn’t want to kiss Quentin, where this was an end-of-the-day he didn’t imagine. 

In the early years of Eliot creating himself, the endless procession of vests and ties and hushed, desperate nights with older men—hedge witches, mostly, when he first got to the city, which certainly heightened his distaste for the lot of them—he hadn’t let himself dream of a real future. The world had coldly informed him there wasn’t one. 

It was Quentin who let him have that, let him have this, the hope for something that would carry him through the dark years and the bright ones, and it’s Quentin who he wants next to him when he’s old and frail, arthritic, stooped over the tiles. Because he’ll be here; they’ll be here. There’s no going back. He’s known that for a while.

He doesn’t deserve the happiness he carries with him, in the core of him, the wrap of Quentin around his body and their slow pleasure in the mornings, the gentle feeling of watching him at his work making potions to sell—or listening to the lilt of his voice when he reads to Teddy from the book he’s made—filled with all the stories Quentin had loved and remembered, recorded from his memory and kept safe for his son. Their son. Stories from Earth. Literature and history, shared and retold through Quentin’s sharp eyes.

They’ll be here in Fillory for the long haul. There’s no possibility that they won’t be. The mosaic hasn’t revealed any of its secrets, and they have a child who needs them—needs both of them, and needs his mother. They’re bound to this land by more than the quest, their lives were born from the seed they inadvertently planted when they stepped through the clock and hiked up the hill to the cottage. 

The reality that’s grown from that seed—it’s thorny and hard and strange in places, sprawling and uncontrollable, but it’s lush and bright and warm, and it’s growing fast, faster than Eliot can see or comprehend, his life passing more quickly with each day, wrapped up in parenthood and partnership and—all the things he never expected—

He thinks sometimes that there can’t be beauty in a life so messy and strange and harder now in so many ways. That Quentin never would have chosen this if he’d had any real choice. 

The warmth of Quentin’s hand on his neck, the press of his fingers beneath Eliot’s shirt—that feels real and true in a way that nothing ever has. His life didn’t work before this; it never had. He thinks it’s almost working now. As close as it’s going to get.

Quentin turns the whole of his compact body so he’s wrapped around Eliot, sitting in his lap, rocking the gentle weight of his body against him. Eliot presses his lips to Quentin’s nose, down the line of his throat, along the crest of his collar bone, pulling at the ties on his shirt until he’s coming undone, pushing off his shirt in the cold night air, his fingers threading into the curls at the base of Eliot’s neck.

“I don’t want to think about today,” Quentin says. “About, you know—”

“I know.” Eliot kisses Quentin’s hairline right next to his ear, protectiveness, low and fierce, beating beneath his skin.

He probably should have protected Quentin by moving on, refusing this life with him. Q got under his skin, refused to let go, made this thing between them grow, and Eliot—Eliot is weak when it comes to Quentin, weaker even still after years of sleeping next to him, knowing his body. Knowing exactly how complete he feels when he bears the force of Quentin’s wanting, when he gives into it.

—How he smells—like sweat and cold air—and he licks into Quentin’s mouth, cupping the back of his neck, brushing over one nipple, circling as it crinkles, growing stiff beneath the pad of his thumb—

Quentin’s cold lips pressed to the hollow of his neck, hot breath spreading over his skin, one hand tangled up in his hair, the other searching down and undoing the clasp of Eliot’s trousers, unfastening him—

“You’ve gotten good doing that one-handed,” Eliot says. Breathes into the space between Quentin’s neck and shoulder. 

Quentin laughs and scrapes his lips over the stubble on Eliot’s neck—it’s just not as necessary to shave so often here, and Quentin likes it just this way—and he’s palming Eliot’s cock, which is showing interest now, stiffening up in his fingers.

“What do you want, baby?” Eliot thinks—he’s always wanted a lot of things, but most of all now, he wants what Quentin wants. Wants to be what he wants.

“I just—don’t wanna think,” Quentin says, the weight of his gaze resting heavy on Eliot. “It’s just—everything is different. And I don’t want—I hate it. How everything’s changed. How I fucked it up.”

“I know.” Eliot runs his fingers along the line of Quentin’s shoulder, brushing down over the muscles in his arms. The landscape of Quentin’s body, too, has changed in the seven years—coming up to seven and a half—that they’ve been here. His body has always been lean and tight in a way that never fit his anti-gym-class persona, but he’s strong now, his skin coppery-tan year-round. There are streaks of gray at his temples and Eliot—Eliot’s feels lucky to see it.

He thinks often of the other timelines. Of how—he must have lost Quentin again and again. He feels the fact of it beneath his skin like an ache in his muscles. There are no memories there, only extrapolations. He would have said—years ago, he guesses—that he’d never have someone so essential to him, would never be essential to someone in the way that they are to each other, the way he sees so clearly now. 

He knows now that he’s loved Quentin for a long time, and it’s clear to him—that love has been multiplied by all the worlds they’ve inhabited, all the times he’s come to know Quentin, every place Eliot has fallen for him. He thinks he’s lucky, here in Fillory, that Quentin loves him back, in this place apart, separate from all the others. That they have each other. That there are losses here, but there isn’t one that will end them.

It takes some reconfiguration, peeling out of clothes—pushing Quentin out of his shirt and pants and stripping the linen and hemp fabrics from Eliot’s long limbs—and adding an extra climate enchantment to shield them from the wind, a warming charm to the threadbare quilt. It’s getting too cold for this but—Quentin needs him, wants to be out here where they can sleep beneath the sky, dispel the close-quarters winter claustrophobia of the cottage, where they’re stuck for days on end when it decides to snow. 

He kisses Quentin, slow and methodical, tipping his head back and brushing his hair back—shot through with threads of silver now—fingers exploring the dip just above his collar bone, the lines of his shoulder—hard wood beneath skin on one side. Slipping his tongue into Quentin’s mouth, he puts his palm to the back of his neck—it’s warm there, and Quentin goes slack beneath his fingers, a sigh escaping his lips. He lets Eliot kiss him, wet and open, their cocks trapped half-hard between them, nested together, arousal spreading quiet but certain, echoing in tandem through in the space between their bodies.

“You’re so sweet,” Eliot murmurs against his lips. And Quentin—

Quentin laughs, eyes crinkling up. “I’m a dick—I really, really am.”

“Oh, I know. Believe me—I know, better than anyone.” Eliot kisses down over his neck, across the line of his collarbone. “But you’re sweet in my bed. You just wanna get fucked, don’t you?”

“I—hnn— _Eliot_.” 

Eliot is lifting Quentin’s ass in his hands, Quentin trembling beneath him, and he presses his thumb to Quentin’s entrance and watching his cock stiffen as he teases at the rim, the heat and texture of this tight, tender space against Eliot’s fingertips. Eliot pushes him down to the mattress, moving him slow—Quentin always goes just where Eliot puts him, always wants to. Eliot brushes his knuckles over each stiffened nipple in turn, and Quentin arches up from the bed, mouth open in a sigh, caught in the firelight. 

Eliot kisses him in the center of his chest, rubs his face there, presses his lips along the line that leads down, licks between the firm ridges of muscle, rubs his nose along his abdomen, scrapes his teeth over his hipbone.

He’s so—so beautiful, laid out by the firelight, the dim glow of distant stars, the shadows of bare trees outlined on his body, golden skinned and dark haired, cock thick and lovely, wet at its tip, always ready for Eliot.

“You taste sweet,” Eliot says. 

“I don’t—I’m all sweaty from working. I didn’t get to wash off—” Quentin’s body jolts beneath him when Eliot’s tongue hits a sensitive spot near Quentin’s navel. He rubs his cheek over the fuzzy hair on his belly, humming, pleased at the scratchy-soft feel of him, the planes of his belly.

“Mmm, good. You taste like you, and it’s sweet.”

Quentin laughs and buries his fingers in Eliot’s curls. There’s a deep comfort in the touch of his strong fingers, in the way he tugs at Eliot’s hair, pushes his fingers through it. He thinks about—how much he wanted this Quentin’s first year, how he dreamed about it, even after everything, after he’d been crowned. He never would have let Quentin touch his hair like this—too much product and process in his life before, where there’s none, or not much of any now—just rosemary oil, the occasional wash—and—that makes him smile, that he can let Quentin have him like this. He presses his lips to the jut of Quentin’s hip and moves lower, nosing at his cock, taking in the heady, masculine scent before tracing his tongue over a vein, skin hot and velvety against his tongue.

Eliot laves over his balls, getting them wet as Quentin cries out, shameless—which is so good—really the very best thing he knows, Q’s voice wrung out with pleasure and wanting— Eliot licks up the line of his shaft again and takes Quentin in his mouth, lets him buck up against his soft palate, pressing back—his taste salty and heady-sharp as he swirls his tongue over the head, wet with precome. Eliot’s cock pulses when Quentin arches up, and he pins Quentin’s hips with his hands and takes him to the back of his throat again.

“Baby—if you don’t stop—” Quentin cries out and fists Eliot’s hair, tugging, the pain traveling through Eliot, down his spine, through the hardening length of his cock.

And that’s fine. He’d like to keep tasting Quentin, but he wants to be inside him even more, watch his face as he takes Eliot. When Eliot pulls off, Quentin’s cock slaps against his belly. 

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’ve got you,” he murmurs. He spreads Quentin’s legs, spits on his fingers and rubs over the puckered skin. He presses in just to watch the muscles in Quentin’s abdomen jump, anticipates how good it’s going to feel to be sheathed in him, seated and snug inside. “How do you want me, baby?”

~~***~~

**Manhattan, 2019**

They kiss for a long time, until Quentin is panting, his cock pressing insistent against the soft jersey fabric of the boxer briefs he stole from Eliot’s drawer. He likes wearing Eliot’s things—he’d stolen more than a few undershirts while the Monster had inhabited his body. For a while at least, some of those things had still smelled like Eliot, even after months in storage. There was a hint of him, at least. 

“Those my boxers?” Eliot looks down at the gray underwear and palms the outline of his cock.

“Yeah— _ah_ —oh, yeah. They are.” 

“They’re mine,” Eliot says. He gives Quentin’s cock a squeeze.

“They’re soft.”

“I’m not complaining,” Eliot says, kissing him again, nipping Quentin’s lower lip.

They’ve only fooled around a few times since coming home from the infirmary. Between Quentin’s trauma-panic and the nerves regenerating in his arm—and Eliot’s magical scar that had nicked an artery, there hasn’t been space for anything beyond—hand stuff, what Eliot lovingly refers to as the “old fashioned way of getting the job done.” 

But Quentin is more than interested now, a dry, empty, stirring at his core. Eliot snuggles in close, slipping his hand below his waistband. Quentin can feel the press of his cock—he’s getting hard, breath coming fast as he presses kiss after kiss to Quentin’s lips like he’s making sure that Quentin’s real, like he’s not going to vanish.

“You wanna? Um—more than—what we’ve done before?” Quentin presses his nose to Eliot’s cheek. It’s cold, even though it’s warm here in the apartment, faded sun pressing in through the window, through the thin curtains, dust motes drifting through the air—a facsimile of snowfall, he thinks. 

“Mm, yeah. I do. I can’t do too much. I’m sorry—”

“You’re beautiful,” Quentin says, feeling a little helpless with it, running his fingers over the length of Eliot’s neck. “Doesn’t matter what we do. Just wanna be with you.”

Eliot grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. It’s been a rare thing, Eliot smiling, since coming home. Or whatever this is. An approximation of home. It feels haunted sometimes by all the things they’ve been through, the Monster and its whims. The smile, though—that always clears some of the cobwebs away, dries out some of the rot that threatened to take over Quentin’s mind. “You could—” Eliot bites his lip, his eyes lighting up. “You could fuck me.”

The idea jolts through him, an electric current. Quentin’s cock jerks, pressed close against Eliot’s. They’ve only fooled around a little since—since all of it—which means these bodies have never; they’ve never been with each other like that, not here. Not that it’s been far from Quentin’s mind. Sleeping next to Eliot, even on days when he wakes in the cold sweat of panic—he thinks that one day they’ll be healed and maybe a little more spry and Eliot can have him, and Quentin can give that to him. Again; for the first time. 

Quentin rubs his face against Eliot’s shoulder, thinking about—what it was like being with Eliot in Fillory, the Polaroid memories that live inside him, drawn up from a life he’d never exactly lived. “Mmm, I do like the sound of that. I don’t know if you want me to come in like, three seconds, because that’s probably what’s going to happen—” 

“I don’t care. I just wanna feel— _alive_. I wanna feel you.”

“I—okay,” Quentin says, blushing, the tips of his ears burning. He huddles in closer to Eliot, or tries to—it’s not physically possible to draw himself in further unless Quentin actually crawled inside of him. Which. He does want to do that. He does but— “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Eliot cups his cheek, brushing his thumb along Quentin’s lower lip, painfully tender, open want in his eyes. This is not the Eliot he knew in his early days at Brakebills. This is Eliot, stripped bare, all his layers peeled away. “You could never, sweetheart. You want to?”

“Yeah, of course I want to. Look at you.” 

“Mm, I have looked at me. I’m a wreck.”

“A beautiful wreck,” Quentin says, brushing his knuckles against Eliot’s cheek.

“Then you should—”

“I mean, I like, yes, a hundred percent want—it’s just—”

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m just—mm—I _haven’t_ , not in this body. Done this with you.”

Eliot gives him a little smirk that’s entirely unconvincing. They’ve changed—they’ve both changed, changed together over a lifetime, changed in this life in their quests, the successes and failures. The grade school crush he’d had on Eliot from the start had developed into something wilder, something untamed, something like love—and it had taken Quentin a while to realize it, and he doesn’t know about Eliot, not exactly, when it had happened—

“You can start by kissing me, love,” Eliot says.

And so, he does. Quentin kisses him, hesitant at first but—a full press of lips, Eliot opening to him, gasping as Quentin slips his tongue inside, wound so tight he’s—vibrating with it—all light and energy contained in the confines of his half-rebuilt body, his mind a shared space for the memories of another lifetime. Eliot’s hand goes to the back of his neck, Eliot pulling Quentin on top of him, placing Quentin where he needs him, almost desperate, tugging at the waistband of Quentin’s boxers—

“Hey, let’s go slow,” Quentin says, trembling, held tight in the cradle of Eliot’s body, hips rolling gently, sparks traveling up his spine as he presses—gentle, careful—against the hard line of Eliot’s cock. Now that he’s here, now that he’s gotten here—past all the wards and barriers and walls Eliot designed, past the hurt and heartache, the breathless moment where he bared his soul, a shivering thing—crushed so badly that his solution had been to lock himself away—and beyond the deep red blur of months when he thought he’d lost Eliot forever, placating and pleasing that creature of endless wanting that had Eliot’s hands and Eliot’s eyes, all of Eliot’s long lines that Quentin had known and loved so well—now that he’s here, he can let this be what they both need, tender and—gentle. “I’m gonna go slow.”

“Okay, baby. You’re so good to me.” Eliot grins. “You should keep the boxers on, push them down to your knees—then open me up and fuck me.”

A blush rises hot over Quentin’s cheeks, and Eliot’s giving him a hungry look, eyes following the lines of Quentin’s body, checking him out like he’s a first year. “You think that’s—”

“A deranged level of hot? Yes, yes I do.” 

Quentin smiles and bends to kiss Eliot. This time, Eliot tugs at the boxer briefs, pulling them down slow, ogling Quentin’s cock, stopping when the underwear are mid-thigh. “That does it for you?”

Eliot grips his cock—Quentin thrusting forward into it—and—he nods slowly. “Mm, yeah. Now c’mon.” 

There’s a rearranging of bodies, limbs older and slower than the bodies that had done this before (but never this), yet younger than the bodies that had done this in thousands of variations over a lifetime of love lived in a universe apart, a closed loop that continues on only in bright flashes of remembrance.

Quentin remembers—he does remember—a night like this when he’d simply needed to feel something other than the swirling storm in his brain—he barely remembers but there are images there—as he pulls off Eliot’s boxers, their cocks nested together, the trapped boxer briefs holding his thighs tight together as he hitches against Eliot’s cock, as Quentin kisses and kisses him, soft and slow. “There’s a little translocation spell for the—the good lube,” he murmurs, lips pressed to Eliot’s improbably long, impossibly beautiful neck.

Eliot laughs into his shoulder. “Can’t pull silicone lube from thin air.” 

“No, it’s—this is the good stuff—” He goes through the tuts for the cleaning prep spell that Eliot taught him—seared in his memory—petting over Eliot’s thighs as he shivers through it. 

“You gonna give me—” Eliot trembles a little, and Quentin sweeps his fingers over Eliot’s cock, the heated skin petal-soft beneath his fingers. He likes it like this, Eliot laid out before him, so he can see all of him. “—the good stuff?”

“Mm, yeah,” Quentin says, his own dick pulsing, sparks running through him. “I thought you might—come back. And maybe you’d want me—”

“I’ll always want you. I’ve always—” He feels Eliot smiling, a playful scrape of teeth across his shoulder. “So you were thinking of me, sometimes—”

Quentin laughs. “Yeah, I thought about you. God, I thought about you so much. Even with the nightmare of it all, I thought about you.” He spreads Eliot’s legs and teases at his rim before pressing one finger inside—careful—watching Eliot’s very lovely—thick and long—cock, as he crooks his finger, teases him—it jerks, and Eliot groans, wanton. “I like seeing you like this.”

“Oh _fuck_ , I like when you,” Eliot starts, his hips arching up beneath Quentin’s hands, “when you use your hands.” Quentin remembers mostly—begging Eliot to fuck him for weeks after they first kissed, laid out on the mosaic, one of those almost-memories that sends a heated thrill up Quentin’s spine. They did this, too. Later on. More when they were older and Eliot had arthritis and—Quentin still wanted him, so much, just seeing him, the soft beauty of his hair grown wild, his body strong and skin weathered by the sun and time. Quentin never knew of anyone who looked half so good in Fillorian peasant garb. He wore rough hewn linen and hemp like a king.

Quentin slides his finger almost all the way out, pushes in again with two, as Eliot rolls his hips up to greet him, drawing him in deeper. Eliot’s body twitches and opens around his fingers, fluttering and giving as Quentin falls into the sense memory, curling his fingers and pressing up and in. The sound Eliot makes—low and desperate, thighs quivering, cock jumping—tells him he’s doing it right, doing what Eliot wants—and after all this waiting, not just after these weeks of healing but after the Monster, after the quest, this ocean of time—this is what Quentin needs. He presses his head, hair damp with sweat, against Eliot’s neck, licking along his neck and twisting his fingers inside as Eliot pants against his ear.

“Q—baby—that’s so—”

“Is it good? Am I—are you ok?” He forces himself to slow down, stills his fingers; his cock, hot and slick, pressed in the crease of Eliot’s thigh, pulses in time with the beating of his heart. The waistband is tight around his thighs, a little nip of sensation where it cuts into him.

“I’m so good, sweetheart.” He brushes Quentin’s hair behind his ear and pushes up to kiss him, wincing as he falls back, head against the pillow. 

“Keep going—I want you—”

“I don’t wanna—”

“You’re not going to hurt me. It’s good—you’re good. I promise.”

Quentin presses his face to the center of Eliot’s chest, rubbing his face over the hair there, his tongue darting out across one nipple and the other, rocking forward soft and slow, waiting for Eliot’s body to open for him. 

It’s a blur, slow as magma bubbling up from the earth, smooth bubbles pressing outward, on and on. He presses in with a third finger, rocking into Eliot’s body, gasping when he feels his body give. Cock blush pink, hard and leaking against his belly, Eliot sighs and relaxes, hands pushing through Quentin’s hair, both of them trembling and gasping—

“Is that—” Quentin curls his fingers and strokes inside him, his own cock jerking when Eliot lets out a low groan. “—feeling okay?”

“Yeah, fuck—it does.” Eliot kisses his forehead and the ridges of his cheekbones, brushes his hands over Quentin’s shoulders as they put themselves in place—hungry and aching and oh, Quentin is trembling when he pushes a pillow beneath Eliot’s hips and sees him spread out, hitching his long leg over Quentin’s hip—he’s still careful, so careful as he lines up the blunt head of his cock and starts to press in, running his hands along Eliot’s sides and coming to rest at his waist. 

“Oh fuck,” Quentin whispers, watching himself as he nudges inside, pushing forward until the head of his dick is just inside.

“Yeah, sweetheart, just like that—”

It’s tight and hot, and it’s been so long since Quentin has done this—been with anyone like this—he’s shivering, hips stuttering forward, boxers caught around his knees, all graceless as Eliot pulls him in tight with his leg, hands on Quentin’s shoulders, nails digging into his flesh. 

Eliot murmurs in his ear as Quentin sinks into him— _“So good, sweetheart; you fit me so good”_ —an erotic stream of consciousness about how—Eliot’s wanted this and thought about it since he’s been back, thought about Quentin and all the nights they spent in each other’s arms—tells Quentin he remembers _that_ , remembers their bodies, twined together in their infinite variations, all the ways they loved each other.

He feels raw, split open, by this wanting, the untold time he spent wondering not if Eliot would love him again but—if he’d get Eliot back alive. His first real thrust feels unreal, his whole body startling, his mouth open against Eliot’s, tongue darting against salty skin as he rolls his hips again, deliberate and—

“Can we,” Eliot says, shifting beneath him, drawing him in deeper—Quentin lets out a shocked, breathy moan, “here, love.” It’s not a question exactly, just an adjustment, Eliot draping one leg over Quentin’s hips, the other angled against the bed so there’s no pressure, no pain. 

“You good?”

“Fucking fantastic, sweetheart,” Eliot says as Quentin, shaking, knees pressed hard against the mattress, drives into him. He’s on the cusp of asking Eliot again— _Is it okay? Is it good?_ —but Eliot kisses him and threads his fingers through Quentin’s hair and pulls hard, groaning. “More—just like that, my love.”

Quentin somehow manages to hold on, manages to pull almost all the way out and slide back in, slowly, fingers teasing at Eliot’s rim and back up to wrap around the length of his cock. It’s been so long and—it’s a lot to coordinate, but Eliot must like what he’s doing because his leg is wrapped tight around Quentin, and he’s making punched out sounds, pleasured and pleased, his head thrown back against the pillow, his abdomen quivering and cock twitching as Quentin snaps his hips into the _slick-tight_ heat, burying himself and holding on, holding back because he wants it to be _good_ , wants to do right by Eliot, show him he can be the man he once was, that he can be the person he was when they worked, when they built their relationship up from the bottom and remade it into something real and lasting. 

Eliot pulls one hand away from Quentin’s back, wrapping his fingers tight around his cock, his other hand reaching up to pet at Quentin’s chest, his hand going to the back of Quentin’s neck, pulling him down at an awkward angle for a kiss that makes Eliot smile. 

“S’hard to kiss you like this,” Quentin mumbles—and Eliot laughs as Quentin stretches to kiss him again, wet and artless, his eyes fluttering as he shoves himself in deep and Eliot _moans_. He pulls back so he can see—see himself as he rolls his hips and rocks into Eliot, cock vanishing inside of him, his movements taking on more purpose, relief and release sitting at the edge of his awareness. Eliot’s hand moves, speeding up now, over his cock, foreskin rolling back and forth over the rosy-blushing head, which is sort of almost— _almost_ —more than Quentin can bear in terms of pure Eliot hotness. 

Eliot arches up beneath him, pushing into Quentin, drawing the pooling arousal up from within Quentin, pushing him to the limit, his breaking point, that razor’s edge just before release, the sounds falling from his mouth broken and desperate. It crests and crests inside, low in his hips, crawling up his spine, sparks shooting through his thighs. “I’m close—so close—”

“Come on, baby, come on,” Eliot murmurs, stretching up to kiss him again as Quentin’s hips stutter, his cock buried, tight, so tight inside. Grabbing Eliot’s waist, nails digging into his skin, face against Eliot’s chest, Eliot all around him—the taste of his sweat and the weight of his wanting, the promise of a future he thought he’d never see, the reclaimed expanse of his body, changed but still his, still essentially Eliot’s—and Quentin comes, letting it flow from him, hips hitching forward as Eliot shouts beneath him, stroking his own cock fast now as Quentin sits, still half hard inside of him, tangled up in Eliot's boxer briefs around his knees, waves of pleasure rising through him like champagne bubbles popping.

“Stay there, baby,” Eliot says, breathy, a little desperate as he strokes himself on and on. Eliot’s body tenses up, the muscles in his abdomen jumping as he lets out a shattered, broken groan and comes, a tight hot squeeze around Quentin’s oversensitive cock. “You did good—it’s so good— _oh._ ”

It’s almost too much, the heady sensation of finally having Eliot—in this room, in this city, in this apartment surrounded by wards and walls that can protect them at least for now, all of the layers between them shattered and stripped apart until there’s nothing left but the warmth of their skin, the touch of lips, their fingers tangled—and Quentin, groaning, pulls their bodies together, wrapping Eliot in his arms. Eliot’s size, not just his sheer height and breadth—but the gravity of him, the _pulling towards_ that is such an essential part of him—the core of Eliot that makes him good and true and kind, the depth of him, the High King in his blood, his sense of justice and his intuition, all of his flare and sparkle—those things make Eliot difficult sometimes, resistant to possession, resistant to love, unbearable and impossible and frustrating. 

But Quentin holds him now and kisses him and tells him with his body and his soul that he is loved, and he is safe, and they are here together in all the important ways, and that they are not losing each other for many decades to come. They fall asleep again, the rain murmuring on and on outside.

He does not say these things out loud, but Eliot knows. He knows the truth that sits, laid bare between them, and Quentin doesn’t have to tell him how he’s always been pulled towards Eliot and he always will be, that he can’t imagine anyone else here, with him, for as long as Eliot will keep him.

Eliot knows. He knows.

~~***~~

**Fillory, Year Seven**

Eliot didn’t think he was going to get the distinct privilege, as he sees it, of loving Quentin like this again in the rotation of his extremely fucked up life. But he’s glad that they’ve fallen into each other again, even if it means the rest of their lives is falling apart.

The brush of his fingers across Quentin’s shoulder, the pressing of lips to his skin—sacred, holy—the discreet movements of Quentin’s muscles beneath Eliot’s fingertips—more than sex—taken together, these small acts of love feel like another revelation, an uncovering of the truths that sit at Eliot’s center. That he is not so broken that he cannot love someone, cannot love someone like this.

“I want you to fuck me,” Quentin says, kissing the back of Eliot’s free hand as Eliot brushes over the path of his lips, “until I don’t remember what day it is.” 

Eliot laughs and kisses him, nipping at his lower lip as Quentin moans, rocking against his hip, hard and hot. “I never know what the fuck day it is. Ember’s Day or Umber’s Day. I don’t remember the other ones.”

Quentin giggles and buries his head against Eliot’s shoulder. “We really should learn the calendar. Might be practical—like, as parents or—listen, that’s really not important right now.”

“Mm, no. It’s not. I completely agree.” Eliot brushes his thumb across his lower lip. 

Quentin takes Eliot’s wrist and pulls his fingers into his mouth, licking over them, his eyes fluttering as he sucks at them. His other hand brushes over Quentin’s back and down to the curve of his ass, fingers brushing between his cheeks, over the tight clench of muscle. 

“Turn over for me, sweetheart,” Eliot says, pulling his hands away, Quentin groaning and making a show of chasing Eliot’s fingers—but he rolls over, the whole of his body against the bed, Eliot’s thighs firm on either side of him. So he’s covered, surrounded. Holding Quentin, pressing into him, Eliot’s chest to his back—places a limit on Quentin’s pain, how much he can feel it rattling around in his brain. 

“So it’s gonna be like this, huh?” Quentin wiggles a little as Eliot sets himself between his thighs.

“Mmhmm.” The ambient light of the fire plays over the dips and ridges of muscle, the cacodemon tattoo with its stippled outline. When Eliot touches the _Q_ , the magic fizzes beneath his fingertips, and Quentin shivers, letting out a little sigh. Eliot bends to press his lips against it, the skin cold and smooth. His lips trace over Quentin’s spine, down to the swell of his ass. He places a kiss just above his tailbone. “Gonna get you all wet—you want that?”

“God, yeah, I always— _oh_ —”

Eliot nuzzles at his ass, parts Quentin’s cheeks with his thumbs and licks him there, soft at first, savoring the tremors running down Quentin’s thighs, before licking deeper, pressing his thumbs in closer, spreading him open. The most shameless sounds come from Quentin when Eliot has him like this, when he gets him open, and relaxed, his face messy. He’s made Quentin come this way—once, years ago, another time recently. He likes how much Quentin likes this, how sensitive and responsive he is, how he goes out of his mind and begs, broken open.

A zing runs through Eliot’s cock as Quentin’s hips rock forward into the mattress, fingers clutching at the covers, his hips twisting and hitching. Eliot hums against him, spreading him out further and licking deeper. He can take Eliot easily now, opening for Eliot’s cock like it was made to fit him, but Eliot likes how Q goes slack, giving like clay beneath his tongue, slick and open and needy, wiggling back against Eliot’s face to demand more.

The task was to drive Quentin out of his mind—so, mission accomplished. Quentin is writhing and whining and babbling— “God, _fuck_ , Eliot, you—hnn—your _mouth,_ Jesus fuck—”

If the task is distraction by way of orgasm, Eliot mastered that skill, leveled up several times. He’s honed other skills, he guesses, with regard to the—whole being a long-term partner thing. But this is his forte, drawing out Quentin’s desire—and yeah, he’s had plenty of people praise his skills; he won’t deny it—but his attention has long been focused on Quentin. 

Even in the years they weren’t together, Eliot was always playing their greatest hits on a loop in his head, noting in his memory the little things Quentin responded to, drawing out those observations over Quentin’s body—or hornily fantasizing, if one were to put a plebeian term to the depth of erotic planning that Eliot created in his mind—as he watched Quentin, bent over the tiles, sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, the stark black of his tattoo always drawing Eliot’s eye. Calling to him. Inescapable. 

He gets it now, that he’d never wanted to leave Q—life, being what it is, had Eliot foolishly pulling himself away. But now he can put a stop to the storm in Quentin’s brain, create an end to it for a handful of moments. It’s Eliot’s masterwork, loving Q like this.

Quentin is wrung out, whimpering against the pillow, when Eliot summons the lube one-handed, the solid oil melting in the center of his palm. He coats the length of his cock and slips two fingers inside Quentin—easy, God, he takes it as easy as breathing—he’s so slick and hot, keening and pushing back against Eliot’s hand. It’s honestly a crime that Quentin is not _always_ in bed— “You ready, love?”

“Y-yeah,” Quentin says, his breath catching. Like he’s still surprised by Eliot. Like it was—like they were—years ago. “Wanna feel you.”

Eliot lets out a huff of air as he lines himself up, his knees on either side of Quentin’s lovely thighs, his cock pulsing hot as he pushes, sinking in slow, his vision blurring out at the edges as he steadies himself, rocking forward as Quentin’s body relaxes around him. Quentin’s body just _gives_ , clenching around him sweet and tight, pulling him in, as Eliot’s cock disappears inside, until he’s buried to the hilt, flush with the meat of Quentin’s ass. 

Quentin breathes, ragged, face flushed, his back shining in the firelight with sweat. “Feel so full,” he mumbles, sighing and squirming back against Eliot, like he wants it deeper, wants more of Eliot pressed against him, shoved inside of him.

“Yeah, giving you what you need,” Eliot says, rolling his hips, grinding into Quentin hard so the full force of his body pushes him down with each thrust. He presses the whole of himself against Quentin’s back, tangling their fingers together. “God, I could come just like this, rocking into you slow. Leave you all hard and dripping and—”

“Yeah?” Quentin squeezes Eliot’s hands. 

“I’d come inside you and—God, you remember that charm—”

Quentin laughs, the last bit of it mixing with a moan as Eliot snaps his hips, driving in harder. “The everlasting dick spell—”

“Yeah. Fuck you all night long and—keep you just like this, all ready for me. You’d like that.”

Quentin chokes out a response that’s not a word, not exactly, but Eliot knows he’s agreeing—he melts beneath Eliot, making gratifying little _unh-unh-unh_ noises as Eliot picks up speed, rocking the bed, pushing Quentin into the mattress. 

“I know you’d like it. I’d come back and slide into you—” His cock pulses, a shiver running through the core of him, at the thought of Quentin, laid out in bed, aching and needy and ready, all night. “—and I’d fuck you slow each time, bury myself in you.” Eliot thrusts into him, his balls tight and heavy, thighs burning as he bounces against Quentin’s ass. 

The sounds Quentin makes are—holy fuck—unreal. Eliot’s wet dream of a man, all soft and sweet and a little sharp around the edges, groaning, breath hitching, hands white-knuckled against the blankets, his face and back and neck flushed rosy and glowing. 

Quentin snuck up on him, Eliot thinks, and one day, Eliot was just all the way, hopelessly, entirely in love with him. The whole of him is gone for this one man who is imperfect, yes, and flawed—a know-it-all, often morose, sometimes needy, messy and jealous—and Eliot not-so-secretly likes all of those things, likes giving him what he needs and forcing him out of his moods—and loves it when Quentin gives him a dirty look at the market when Eliot’s talking to a man he’d been with sometime in the nebulous past.

Eliot loves him. Has loved him for years, will love him for years beyond this, can’t imagine a life where he doesn’t love Quentin. And he loves this, the small compact welcoming space of his body, dense and hot and soft beneath his hands.

“So close,” Quentin murmurs. “Harder, c’mon. C’mon, make me—”

Eliot lets out a shuddering breath and drives into him, the sound of sex, wet and rhythmic, filling his senses. He finds himself trying to hold on, his balls drawn up against his body, full, seconds away from release—thinking about baseball, but holy shit, he doesn’t know anything about baseball—biting the inside of his cheek as he fucks into Quentin. Quentin’s breath is coming faster, the rise and fall of his body matching the rhythm of Eliot’s thrusts until—Quentin lets out a broken, animal sound, sobbing as his body seizes, ass clenching down tight around Eliot’s cock—squeezing, his cock, wet and pulsing. 

“Fuck yeah, God, that’s—you feel so—” Eliot’s words fall away as his own need spools tight inside of him, like threads of light bound together, twisting until—Eliot is thrusting into him, harder now, chasing the height of his pleasure, fucking him with brutal precision, Quentin slack and whining beneath him. “God, baby, I’m gonna—”

The promise of release whips through him like thunder rolling, lightning gathering and striking, bright plasma expanding—his hips stutter, nipples brushing against Quentin’s back, a tingling-humming buzz working its way up from the base of his spine to the tops of his shoulders, pleasure mounting in the cradle of his hips, heavy and heady in his cock, throbbing just before—he squeezes Quentin’s hands and buries himself inside, letting out a low, choked noise—Quentin trembling and gasping—he’s so beautiful—beneath him.

Eliot presses fevered kisses over his neck and his stubbled jaw, tasting the salt of his sweat, the barest pieces of Quentin entwined with the barest pieces of him—nothing left between them—Eliot fucks him hard and fast, the sounds filthy and wet, mixed with Quentin’s oversensitive whines and his begging Eliot to fill him up—and Eliot seizes up and comes, bucking hard, filling him hot and whole, crying out, toes curling, pleasure rolling through him, cracking hot and loud with limitless potential. 

The rest is a blur as they roll together, Eliot bringing Quentin into his arms, kissing the tears away from his cheeks, bundling him in close. The reality is that Quentin is no safer wrapped up in Eliot’s arms; it won’t protect him from the wide reality of their world, the starting over of it all, the challenges they’ll face in the scarce months to come. But if Q feels safe here, Eliot can give him this. 

Eliot tuts out a cleaning spell, leaving them both warm and dry—thank fuck this is a world with magic, where pulling it from the air is as easy as breathing. He huddles down next to Quentin, pulling up the soft, old quilt and the heavier wool blankets. 

He thinks Quentin has already fallen asleep, but he takes Eliot’s hand and kisses over each knuckle. “Looks like we could manage sleeping out here tonight. Not so cold.”

“You want to?” Eliot brushes Quentin’s hair back over his shoulder. 

“Yeah. Yeah I think—I’d like that. I like seeing the stars.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Eliot says. 

“You already made me pretty warm. Remember?” Quentin laughs and presses the tip of his nose beneath Eliot’s collarbone. 

“I guess I did say that, huh? You feel any better?”

“Yeah. Or, I mean—I feel like—I don’t feel so alone.”

“You’re not alone.” Eliot kneads the knots between Quentin’s shoulders. “I’m with you, baby.”

They talk a while after that, mostly about nothing—the market and their spring garden and the spells Quentin’s perfected that should be good for bartering. Eliot stokes the fire, using a bit of lazy telekinesis to stack new logs atop the old. Quentin is half dozing next to him when Eliot closes his eyes. 

It’s five days after the winter solstice in Fillory. Time doesn’t run linear next to Earth’s, but Eliot thinks it might be the day after Christmas, somewhere, in some timeline. It feels a little like that time of year, having exchanged gifts a few days back, singing by the fire with Teddy, Quentin telling him about how Ted drove him through the neighborhoods of Montclair to see the lights. Teddy had been a bit unimpressed until Quentin managed a tricky bit of illusion magic that looked like floating lights.

That memory is already fading a bit in his head, jolted and marred by the reminder of what their life is now. Dropping Teddy off with Ari’s parents, effectively breaking the holiday in half. The train rolling along, ever inconsiderate of the movie stills Eliot wishes to keep intact. 

He closes his eyes and tries to place it somewhere safe in his head—Quentin’s terrible singing, the crackling of the fire, the lights above their heads. He has to make sure this doesn’t fade because—

He thinks of nights, not unlike this, in Indiana—before high school, there were vestiges of hope left in his world. His parents didn’t think his soul was irretrievable. He sat out and looked at the stars with his brothers and his cousins, roasted marshmallows by the fire. He’d had a quasi-wholesome experience before puberty struck and othered him entirely, expelling him from the edges and onto that first Amtrak, flung far into the unforgiving world.

In his younger years, his mother had actually supplied Christmas gifts. He always asked for bright things that caught his eye: a small pink sewing machine, glitter nail polish from the Dollar Tree, an embroidery set with a design of kittens and yarn. She’d quietly taken his suggestions, his painfully sincere letters for Santa, and reinterpreted them into some more gender neutral. She always settled on art supplies, a compromise that Eliot now has a lot of (mostly repressed) feelings about. But at the time, he’d loved her peace offerings more than anything.

Eliot would open his presents in front of the fire in their old farmhouse, ignoring his brothers, passing his hands over the RoseArt markers and crayons, sketch pads and construction paper. In later years—tempera paint and watercolor, acrylics the year before he turned thirteen. 

He remembers touching the clean paper and smelling the wax of the crayons, acts of reverence, stacking them neatly on the card table he used as a desk. There was a certain excitement that came along with the newness of these treasured things, a vague, uplifted feeling. Possibility, he thinks. Hope. After school, he’d run home from the bus stop and shut himself in his room, and he’d spend his hours lost in the brushstrokes of creating something new, something born wholly of himself. 

In these past months, he’s felt the same gentle anticipation blooming inside him. The feeling that comes with opening something new and precious, using it as intended. And beyond that—the sense in his body that precedes creation. 

He catches himself trying to pinpoint the cause of those long-forgotten feelings and realizes that it’s this: Quentin asleep on his shoulder, the way his hand rests across the expanse of Quentin's waist, the jut of his hip and the lines of his compact body, the scent of lavender in his hair, the warm brush of his soft lips. 

As fast as the current runs, scenery blending together as they grow older, as they make mistakes and create their life anew Quentin is the thing that anchors him; he’s Eliot’s clarity in the face of rapid change, the treasure Eliot returns to, a single, clear vision that draws him back home.

There’s nothing new about them; they are not plastic-wrapped canvasses or blank-paged journals. They’re getting on in years now, not so far from middle age. They are well worn pages, marked with time and loss, all the quotidian tragedies and joys. 

The newness lies in the hope that Eliot feels. He thinks—even in the midst of wild change—that there’s beauty in the mistakes and the fuck ups and the vastly precarious circumstances of time. When he stands in the sun and forgets himself, slipping back into the years before he knew magic and its dangers, borne back to the moments when he felt that rush before boarding the bus, he thinks the way he feels is less about having something new. It’s more the newness that comes with recreation, making intentional new marks alongside the old ones until new pictures take shape on old canvas, on brittle pages. 

There’s no controlling what his mind will know of this time, but he tries sometimes, when all is still and quiet in their world, to focus on little things, markers between each point along the track. He can only hope the stilled recollections stay in some form—the memories he creates intentionally, a scrapbook recorded from an unfairly quick trip along the line. Even if the broad strokes are all that remain, decades from now, that’s more than enough to know that this is what matters.

For a long time, Eliot thought he’d given up so much of the life he wanted, that Quentin had done the same. He recalls what he used to want—all the pretty boys at Encanto or the lavish life he’d had as High King, the highly sought after magicians’ internships, the bustle of Manhattan and the pulse of the city. That was all spectacle, he thinks, the roles he sunk into by chance and the grand trappings he sought. There’s no great loss there; the people they left behind are the only shadows that worry at him now.

The moons are rising now above the skeletal outlines of the fruit-bearing trees and the older, taller oaks. Quentin is bundled in next to him, snoring softly. This is real. This is life. As fast and chaotic as it is, Quentin stands still at the heart of it. His constant, his lifeline. His one great love.

He puts the thought to rest as he drifts off, a stray image falling through his mind just before sleep claims him. Just a dream, he thinks, a pieced together vision of them in another life, tangled up in bed on a lazy morning as the rain streaks down the windows. It’s an echo of this night, of love beyond reason, beyond understanding. It slips away as he moves into dreaming, hoping that somewhere, some version of himself chose to have this and keep it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna hear me scream about Magicians et al on Tumblr, I'm at [@hoko-onchi-writes](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hoko-onchi-writes). On Twitter I'm [@asavvymama](https://twitter.com/asavvymama), but I'm not there as much.


End file.
